Re: [A-List] US elections 2004

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>Melvin, your comments are very thought provoking and more thought
through than many we hear on 'race' questions these days, and both of usalready know where we agree and where we don't on national-colonial
questions.  We are, in fact, quite close.

But just as 'negritude', to borrow a word from Fanon and others, has
been historically forged, and just as the African American people
emerged into history as a distinct people, so has whiteness been
historically-socially constructed and adapted - and not always
economistically.  Economism in unpacking race has been a huge pitfall
for white Marxists, who have themselves 'naturalized' whiteness, giving
it a kind of de facto normalcy.  This is an indication, I think, of the
powerful ideological persistence of race, and we all know that ideology
asserts itself as a material force.  The white left has been content in
many cases to call for "black and white unite and fight" and such,
implicitly and sometimes explicitly claiming that socialism will
dispense with this 'race thing' (and this gender thing) once and for
all, because the material foundation of exploitation will be abolished,
and with it, the evil flower of racial ideology.  This mechanical
interpretation of base-superstructure flies directly in the face of
experience.  Race is far more powerful than that, far more compelling
than simple 'social necessity.'  The very construction of the US 'white' working class, from its inception, has been racialized. <

Stan



On most questions in life we are extremely close and I try and walk softly but firmly on this thing dubbed the national colonial question. Then I am a "tan Yankee" and have a generation's history as part of the more privilege section of the industrial workers and this colors my view even when I think I am being non-imperial in attitude. 

I most certainly agree and reject the flat and static traditional concept of "base and superstructure" as social categories when Marx and Engels were attempting to explain a dynamic relationship of society. What many Marxist call the fetish mediated dynamic of modern society might be a better framework to talk about "whiteness" after one has "gotten behind" some of the historical factors in American society that inform ones view. My tendency to describe social movement/motion riveted to material changes in how society is organized to work/labor is an effort to enforce a materialist conception - approach, and many times common sense is lost in the process. That is to say "why" something happens and evolves tend to be sacrificed on the altar of how - the context, in which the something emerges and begins to operate on its own basis.  

"Whiteness" contains its own logic and self-movement as an ideological form and as a material category that is a material relationship and reality in our life. Social revolution and most certainly the various political revolutions (politics in the broadest sense of the word) cannot abolish a historical configuration. Social privilege as being white is not simply fused into our system but the historical configuration of the system itself. Socialist revolution in and of itself cannot and will not abolish the primary features of this historical privilege because the societal infrastructure was as you state, the "very construction of the US 'white' working class, from its inception, has been racialized."  This 'identity' of being will not just go away because one thinks it is not proper. 

'Negritude', to borrow a word from Fanon and others, is a wonderful thing and the Anglo-American people as white 'negritude' contains its own logic and self-movement. The term Anglo-American means a specific national formation of white people and one encounters seemingly insurmountable difficulties in describing this process logic. The whites of the South and North of America are Anglo-American as is the majority in Canada. 

The identity of say these three different social groups who are Anglo-American who together are one large social group that has dominated and been guardian of the evolution of the industrial infrastructure is a historical and material category that is not "bad" or "good" as an abstraction. In this sense every generation that produces leaders as guardians/custodians of the societal infrastructure perpetuate the historical privilege that is bourgeois property relations. Abolishing bourgeois property does not abolish the historical feature of guardians/custodians but sets the basis for an evolution that is not antagonistic class movement. 

This question of the slogan "black and white unite and fight" has generally been presented in a non-class and anti-material perspective, as has the concept called "the white left."  When the Communist Party USA raised this slogan in the 1930 the reason - "why," can be gleamed on the basis of "how" - the context. The context embraces the categories of politics, ideology and economics. At that time the blacks, to an overwhelming degree, were agricultural laborers to one degree or another - sharecroppers or working for wages on the farm. In the North many were service workers and a tiny section in heavy industry. 

What is clear is that the majority of blacks were not eking out an existence in the historically evolved industrial infrastructure, which was shaped on the basis of the importation of the ethnic whites and this is the area where the CP was concentrated. To an enormous degree the Marxism of our history was shaped on the basis of the white ethnic immigrants fleeing European reaction. The northern industrial workers could not decisively win their fight because the Southern senators and members of the House of Representatives held the balance of power. They held that power because the African American masses couldn't vote and these national politicians acquired their seniority and control based on the exclusion, isolation and terrorizing of the blacks. The lack of voting privileges of the blacks allowed the fascist and reactionaries to maintain a grip o Congress. All the progressive votes of the North could not overturn and upset the reaction based in the South. 

The only way to defeat Southern based reaction was to unite on the basis of the democratic demands of the blacks. The white workers were not prepared to fight for this due to economic competition and the material reality of whiteness as privilege - the right to enter the industrial infrastructure in front of the blacks. In this specific context what we ended up with was the fight for a unity between the white petty bourgeois democrat - liberals, with the blacks laborers. 

It was an act of political desperation and facing an impossible alignment of actual social forces that led to the CP putting forth the slogan "black and white unite and fight." The social alignment was that blacks and whites were in different areas of work - the economy, and was therefore economically disunited. This made it difficult for the communist to come up with a slogan that expressed the need for unity. "Black and White unite and fight" is abstract and impossible because people who are economically different and socially unequal cannot be united. No on can unite two qualitatively different things because these differences are framed in social life as different agendas. The agenda of the blacks was equality. The agenda of the whites was basically economic expansion. The communist could not win a fight within the working class on the basis of "Unite around equality of opportunity" because the socially privilege whites would not buy it. 

The socially privilege whites had fought the entry of the Irish into the working class because they lowered the wages of the working class from their actual standpoint and ideology. The skilled workers resisted opening their doors to the unskilled because this entailed the cheapening of their labor power and the disintegration of the components of their skill. Here the transition from craft unions to industrial unionism can be better understood and why it required a social struggle and fight within the working class. The working class always fights itself as an aspect of the social and class struggle. 

It was not different with blacks and more complicated because the black masses as a discriminated mass were primarily petty bourgeois in their economic status as sharecroppers and as farm laborers engaging what the traditional Marxist call petty bourgeois production. "Back and white unite and fight" was the best thing going at the time but an impossible slogan that could never work. The CPUSA - these historically loyal, primarily white ethic immigrants, honorable industrial warriors and champions of fair-play, ended up trapped by history and to this day cannot overcome what is basically an outlook that says "black and white unite and fight" against the bosses and corrupt politicians.  

Today we face a very different class alignment. Class alignment means the composition of social classes as they face and interact with one another. Today no one has to call for "black and white unite and fight" because class are politically mobilized on the basis of a common perceived need.  There is no need to emphasis the color factor and when this is stated the white left works itself into a frenzy and scream that one is belittling racism. This is not true. The practical way to unite is always where there is relative economic equality. In a very real way 'Negritude', expresses this practical sense and striving of material unity. 

Appearance reality and white privilege as a mediated form of social existence is more apparent than real and more real than apparent at the same time. Blacks are hit the hardest because of their social existence in the industrial infrastructure and their social existence is the reality of how the working class took shape in our country. Just the trajectory of the technological revolution means that the less skilled sector of the work force is replaced as a social sector by the implementation of advance robotics and computerization, while the more skilled and most skilled is retrained on the basis of the technological advance. This is the reality of white privilege. 

This white privilege is most certainly bestowed upon non-whites as a form of class struggle and ideological unity with the ruling class because this is how the working class was constituted in our country. Some of the most ardent opponents of "illegal" Mexican immigration are Mexicans that immigrated to America one generation ago and in the course of time received citizenship. This "new racism" has at its core white privilege. I generally use the term white chauvinism because it gets behind the historical process from the standpoint of Marx. 

On the one hand every section of society is being hit hard and watching their wages fall as the value form unravels. This process is most certainly uneven and as long as the value of food products fall faster than the industrial product the appearance of stability of the value form maintains itself to a degree. As long as products with qualitatively less human labor meet the same products in the market with cheap labor the price form maintains certain stability. On the other hand the Republicans and Democrats both represent the same dominant sector of capital. 

It is easy to forget that Clinton reformed welfare, as we had known it and was the hand that inflicted a level of economic pain on the black masses that far surpassed anything done by the Reagan administration or Bush Sr. President Clinton was most certainly not a racist. The "white left" just don't get it and neither do those who contend that the Republicans will inflict more pain on the black masses than the Democrats. 

Below are some figures on the impact of the Democrats policy. 

>In 1996 this country's ruling class, led by Bill Clinton, pulled the rug
out from under the poorest of the poor by declaring "the end of welfare
as we know it." This cold-blooded measure denied the most basic help to
those who have nothing. The government's cruel message to millions was
"Sink or swim."

In 2002 George W. Bush praised Clinton's "welfare reform," saying that
it "dramatically improved" the lives of poor people.

Now, in 2003, a new report has revealed one devastating effect of the
government's assault on the welfare poor. Almost 1 million Black
children today live in "extreme poverty"--in families who have incomes
that are less than half the official poverty level. 

According to a report issued in April by the Children's Defense Fund,
the number of extremely poor Black children has risen sharply in recent
years and is now at its highest level since 1980. Households in "extreme
poverty" are defined as those with incomes of less than $7,064 for a
three-person family (half the official poverty level of $14,128).

The number of Black children in extreme poverty shot up 50% from 1999 to
2001 (the last year for which figures are available). In the same
period, the number of Latino children in extreme poverty rose 13% to
733,000. White children in the same group increased 2 percent to 1.8
million. > 


Here is the emerging poverty that indicates a specific historically emerged form of the class struggle. The Democrats did a job on women as a class, children and single parent female households. The most economically depressed and politically impotent section of women is those hit by welfare reform. 

"At the very center of the Republican ideological agenda is white male supremacy" and at the center of Clinton's policy was a distinct alliance based on social classes without regard to color. Clinton and the Northern Democrats do no suffer from Negrophobia as ideology as such. The sectarian polices of the Republican Party demands that their attempts at electoral victory must embrace the historically evolved reactionary South. Even here this ideological assault is more complex than black and white and deals with national chauvinism. The Cuban Mafia is by definition not white as in Anglo-American and bestowing "white privilege" of a huge sector of Cuban immigrants, who live at a higher economic and social status than white workers is not in fact "white privilege" but something else.  

The language structure and words I generally employ in discussing the national and colonial question and the color factor in history shy away from terms like "racism," "white skin privilege," "black nationalism" and "white people" not because I belittle the "color factor" but because we are trying to unravel and get behind a social process. White privilege means very little to the 2 million more Anglo-American children and their parent's recently pushed into intense poverty. We have no need to emphasize color generally speaking. 

I do not believe that Bush Junior is a racist as such but a fascist who by definition must employ aspects of the ideology of the historic fascist movement in America. Junior is not a throwback to the 1930s and 40s but a sophisticated ideologist of the ruling class. What primarily remains as difference between Dem's and Repub's are sectarian policy.  


More later


Melvin P.